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The philosophy of values and the philosophy of history
The philosophy of values and the philosophy of history https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heinrich-rickert/#ValHis Fundamental progress in the cultural sciences with respect to their objectivity, their universality, and their arrangement in a coherent system, is dependent on progress in the development of an objective and systematically articulated concept of culture, i.e., on the approach to a knowledge of value based on a system of valid values. (Rickert 1962, 139–140) While Rickert does not believe that significant progress in the historical sciences of culture can be expected from the development of psychology, he believes that a philosophy of history grounded in an unconditionally valid system of values (Rickert 1924a, 118) would be of paramount importance. If philosophy were able to identify and justify a formal set of values common to all cultures and historical constellations, then the historical sciences could employ such a formal set of values to orient their inquiries. In order to do this, however, philosophy cannot simply rely on empirical generalizations. Given the multiplicity of cultures and the complexity of human history, it would be impossible to adopt a generalizing procedure in order to identify a robust set of values common to all. “Rather, it would be appropriate to reflect (completely independently of the multiplicity of the historical material) on that which holds valid by necessity, that is, the formal presupposition of each value-judgment claiming more than individual validity. Only when such timelessly valid formal values are found will it be possible to relate them to the plenitude of empirically detectable values actually developed in history” (Rickert 1924a, 118). Rickert underscores in various places that such system, however, should be understood as completely “open” (Rickert 1913, 297; Rickert 1921b, 348–355; see Bohlken 2002, 124). This means that it is intended to provide merely the “most encompassing framework in which all meaningful cultural life plays itself out” (Rickert 1934b, 225). The areas of values identified in the system can be filled with the most diverse concrete historical values. Rickert's first attempt to articulate a timelessly valid system of values can be found in his paper On the System of Values (Rickert 1913). The position developed here was eventually recast and schematized visually in the first (and only) volume of his System of Philosophy (Rickert 1921b). Rickert begins his inquiry by describing different kinds of goods, that is, concrete objects related to values. His intent is to read off the objectively valid values from concrete classes of goods. The human creation of goods related to values follows a general impulse towards “completion” (Vollendung), which can be best described as the attainment of a certain goal. Moreover, each realization of values in a good can be understood as the work on a certain ‘content’, which receives a value-related form. Such content can be interpreted as a whole consisting of parts. Starting from these abstract distinctions, Rickert identifies three domains of goods, that of the “uncompletable (unendlich) totality”, that of “fully completed (voll-endlich) particularity” and that which synthesizes the two in a “fully completed totality” (Rickert 1913, 302). To each of these domains of goods Rickert assigns a temporal dimension, such that the goods of un-ending totality are goods of the future, those of fully completed particularity are goods of the present and those of fully completed totality are goods of eternity. A further overarching distinction, however, cuts across these three domains of goods, thus giving as a result six domains: the distinction between contemplation and activity, whose parallel categories of objects are “thing” and “person”. After fleshing out this general scheme Rickert fills in the six domains with actual values and the corresponding cultural activities according to the following schema (Rickert 1921b, annex): Goods: asocial matters (Sachen) Subjective Comportment: monistic contemplation Form: encompassing Stages of completeness Goods: social persons Subjective Comportment: pluralistic activity Form: pervading Domain of Logic (1) Value: truth Good: science Subjective Comportment: judgment Worldview: intellectualism FIRST STAGE Un-completable totality Goods of the future Domain of Ethics (4) Value: morality (Sittlichkeit) Good: community of free people Subjective Comportment: autonomous action Worldview: moralism (Moralismus) Domain of Aesthetics (2) Value: beauty Good: art Subjective Comportment: intuition (anschauen) Worldview: aestheticism SECOND STAGE Fully completed particularity Goods of the present Domain of Erotics (5) Value: happiness (Glück) Good: loving community Subjective Comportment: inclination—devotion (Hingabe) Worldview: eudaemonism System of Philosophy (8) Comprehensive theory of worldviews INTERMEDIATE STAGE Immanent syntheses Love between man and woman (7) Worldview: eroticism Domain of Mystics (3) Value: impersonal sanctity Good: the All-One (world-mystery) Subjective Comportment: solitude (Abgeschiedenheit) (divinization) Worldview: Mysticism THIRD STAGE Fully completed totality Goods of eternity (Transcendent syntheses) Domain of the Philosophy of Religion (6) Value: personal sanctity Good: the world of god (Götterwelt) Subjective comportment: piety Worldview: Theism—Polytheism The following points are distinctive of Rickert's approach to values as presented in the above table: (1) Note that Rickert distinguishes the way in which values relate to their materials in the spheres of contemplation and in the sphere of practice. In his language, the value of truth ‘encompasses’ scientific theories and likewise the value of beauty encompasses works of art. This means that the value is experienced as something essentially ‘beyond’ the particular theory or artwork at issue. On the contrary, in the sphere of practice values ‘pervade’ their materials, that is to say they structure them ‘from within’, as it were. (2) Rickert prides himself on having ‘discovered’ and defended the autonomy of the fifth domain of values, which he labels ‘erotics’ (Rickert 1913, 313–319). Erotics is the sphere of practical life in which subjects cultivate specific values attaching to their relationships to particular people or groups of people. According to Rickert in the philosophical tradition this autonomous domain has been unduly overshadowed by the domain of ethics, which constantly tried to impose its distinctive values on erotics (Rickert 1921b, 406). However, for Rickert our practical life would be unbearable if it were dedicated exclusively to the pursuit of ethical values and the utopian ideal of a community of free subjects (that is, Kant's kingdom of ends). We need a particular sphere of relationships in which the practical thrust of our social life finds full realization in the present. The values characterizing these spheres, such as family, homeland, religious community, etc. need to be respected and studied as a class of values in its own right. (3) Rickert assigns an important role to religio'''n in the totality of cultural life (see Crowe 2010). He points out an inevitable tension between the pursuit of goods of totality in domains (1) and (4), which are ultimately unattainable in our earthly life, and the pursuit of goods of particularity in (2) and (5), which are fully attainable but inevitably finite. Religion opens up the space for ‘transcendent syntheses’, in which this tension is overcome through the '''pursuit of goods of eternity. These, in Rickert's view, do justice to both our human desire for infinity and our human need for actually experienced fulfillment. Mysticism thus offers a transcendent synthesis between the sense of fulfillment characterizing aesthetic contemplation and the unending process of scientific theorein via conceptual knowledge. Similarly, the religious devotion to a divinity experienced as ‘dwelling among us’ (in both polytheistic and monotheistic religions) promises a transcendent synthesis between the values of ethics and those of erotics. (4) For Rickert, however, the transcendent syntheses promised by religion are prefigured, as it were, in two earthly kinds of syntheses, that is, the love between man and woman in the sphere of practice and the production of a philosophical system oriented towards a comprehensive worldview-theory in the sphere of contemplation. As for the love between man and woman, Rickert's view rests on the dubious assumption that women are “essentially” more oriented toward the realization of goods of the present, while men are “essentially” more oriented toward the realization of goods of the future (Rickert 1921b, 403). Since no meaningful existence can be devoted exclusively to one type of goods (the goods of the future being ultimately unattainable and the goods of the present being ultimately too narrow), Rickert argues that the “personal union” (Rickert 1921b, 402) between man and woman amounts to a mutual completion and a synthesis of the two domains of values. Needless to say, to a contemporary reader this view sounds extremely antiquated and even sexist. However, it has to be interpreted in the context of Rickert's time. In his eyes, insisting on the mutual completion and irreducibility of the values traditionally associated with masculinity and those traditionally associated with feminineness (Rickert 1921b, 403) was a way to defend the equal value of men and women in the whole of cultural life. Philosophy as a worldview-theory based on the system of values, in turn, can provide a comprehensive picture of the world in which all contemplative and practical activity takes place. To the extent that it strives towards a comprehensive system, however, philosophy tends to exceed the sphere of theoretical goods (Rickert 1921b, 408). Instead of partaking in the indefinitely open work of the specialized sciences philosophy attempts to survey the totality of cultural life and to systematically determine its underlying value-related structure. In each successfully articulated philosophical system we then find a completed cultural good, which differs from the characteristic open-endedness of theories in the specialized sciences. The philosopher thus occupies the middle ground between the scientist moving indefinitely forward in her specialized investigations and the artist striving to produce a complete artwork. Philosophy, then, can then be considered an immanent synthesis between the unending totality characterizing the goods of science and the particularity characterizing the goods of art.